North Korea said yesterday it has stopped disabling its nuclear plants and would consider restoring them because the US has not removed it from a terrorism blacklist.
A foreign ministry spokesman said that because the US was not honoring a disarmament deal, work to make the plants unusable had halted on Aug. 14.
“Secondly, we will consider restoring the Yongbyon facilities to their original state in accordance with strong demands from our relevant agencies,” he said.
The US says the North must accept strict procedures to verify the declaration it made in June of its nuclear activities before it can be taken off the blacklist, which blocks US economic aid. The North rejected the demand.
“It would be a big mistake if the US believes that it can carry out a search of our home as it pleases, just as it did in Iraq,” the spokesman said in a statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency.
The dispute means that a six-party process that began in August 2003 “will inevitably stay off track for the time being,” said Yang Moo-jin, professor at Seoul’s University of North Korean Studies.
“North Korean leader Kim Jong-il seems to have make a strategic decision that he will no longer continue negotiations with the Bush administration,” Yang said.
The North’s statement questioned the value of the talks, which group the two Koreas, the US, China, Russia and Japan.
“When the six-party talks has [sic] degenerated into a circus where the strong bullies the weak as it pleases, what’s the use of the six-party structure?” it asked.
The North tested an atomic weapon in 2006, but then agreed to return to the talks. Under deals reached last year, it began disabling the reactor and other plants under US supervision.
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